3 Month Check In!

Here we are, almost three months into being our own little family unit! Orion will be 12 weeks old tomorrow; I can scarcely believe it. A lot has happened in that time.
Orion has nearly doubled in weight: he started at 7lbs. 8.5ozs and is now somewhere around 12lbs.
We had a rough start with nursing, but now he's a champion on the boob.
Instead of sleeping all the time, then all day and not at night, Orion now mostly sleeps at night.
He smiles all the time and we have a couple of silly games we like to play. The funniest one right now is the 'comfy blanket game' in which I smoosh a fleece blanket on his cheeks. He makes hilarious faces!
Orion is starting to laugh - he does this funny inhalation shriek and will sometimes pant quickly when he's excited.
He has loved music since before his birth!
In the past few days he has suddenly recognized his hands and has spent some amusing time starting at them and moving them around. This has been coupled with a sudden increase in the amount that he grasps things. He especially likes to hold my fingers or shirt while he's nursing.
He slept for a record of 6 hours in his bassinet last night! This is a big deal for me, because even if he sleeps for a long while in the bed with us, I don't sleep as deeply. When he does sleep with us, he likes to sleep in the middle with a hand on each of us.
Over the past three days Orion has been in a growth spurt; he ate almost constantly for the previous two days and spent a lot of today sleeping. He also has not pooped in about 3 days; I'm sure I'm in for a fun diapering experience sometime really soon! In a day or two I'll wake up in the morning, take a look at him, and realize he's grown suddenly in the night!
Today is the third time I've gone through his clothes and culled out the items he's grown out of while cycling things in that he's grown into.
I do a lot of laundry, and most of it is not mine.
Bibs are a necessity - he goes through a few of those before an outfit change is needed.
I shower a lot less often than I used to, and at weird times.
I'm really proud of myself if I manage to accomplish a lot of chores or sewing during the day.
My "gross-out" meter has gone way down. Bodily functions are now a common part of everyday conversation, with cutsie nicknames for everything: burpies, pukies, poopies, pee-pee, and pooties (farts).
There are cotton cloth diapers on everything as 'puppy pads' for Orion to lay on, which are instrumental in keeping furniture items pukie-free.
We both love it when Russell comes home. I'm so thankful that he likes to cook! He also does most of the diapering and burping in the evenings, leading us to say I'm in charge of input and he's in charge of output! Russell is really a good daddy and enjoys carrying Orion around and playing with him. It's always a fun day when daddy's home!
Nursing can often be boring, so I found endless mindless entertainment in Netflix watch instantly and DVD's, Facebook, Stumbleupon, and countless numbers of novels.
A trip to the library by myself it amazing. Going to the movies while Orion stayed home with Jo Ann felt like an adventure!
We're very proud of using cloth diapers and cloth wipes. That coupled with breastfeeding means our weekly baby costs are nearly 0 until we need to buy him new clothes and baby food.
Kiwi is totally unabashed by the baby. Caspian is still a little bummed out and acts needy and mopey sometimes. However, they really have nothing to complain about. I am currently in a turf war with both of them over the bassinet; I have to cover it with a sheet when Orion's not in it or one of them will sleep in it. It's better than a cat butt in my face in the wee hours of the morning, but it leads to too much laundry!
Orion himself is a great baby. He's cute, sweet, fun, and easy to adore. He's a popular little guy with the crowd at Weaver St. and has been a great audience member at all the shows we've gone to. He's a keeper!

The Goonies!

We had an epic evening!
The Varsity theater, a historic movie theater on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, closed a while back, much to the dismay of folks like us who saw many a movie there through the years. Fortunately, the owners of the Chelsea Theater, another independent movie theater across town, re-opened the Varsity with a new purpose. Old-school movies or films that are slightly past their release dates are shown, and tickets are cheap. The concessions are good (real butter!) and they even have beer (Russell says Yay!)
They've played some great flicks in the past few months - we went to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which was way fun! But last week I noticed the current weeks' line-up included my all-time favorite movie from childhood:
The Goonies!
For those of you who haven't seen it, The Goonies is an adventure film directed by Richard Donner and produced by Stephen Spielberg. It came out in 1985 and includes young actors like Sean Astin and Corey Feldman. It's about a group of misfit kids in Astoria, Oregon, who are about to lose their community to the evil rich folks who want to build a golf course. The kids find a treasure map in the attic, and go after the lost pirate ship in hopes of saving their homes. Along they way they get tangled up with a group of bumbling villains who are also after the treasure. Adventure and high-jinks ensue.
I saw it in the theatre when it came out, and I even remember that event fairly well. We loved this movie as kids; we rented it every weekend, to the point that I wonder now why no one just bought us a copy of it on VHS - we certainly spent at least as much renting it from the local grocery store. We even used to organize the neighborhood kids into 'playing Goonies' wherein we'd choose characters and run around the neighborhood looking for pirate treasure and quoting lines from the film. We all used to fight over who got to play Mouth, the character played by Corey Feldman, because we all thought he was the funniest character. In fact, I still think that. Though Chunk is absolutely hilarious, too!
It was poignant for me to see The Goonies on the big screen again, as it really brought me back to childhood, and made me think of my best friend Amy from my elementary years. I recently found out that Amy was murdered at age 21 by some idiot criminals in a car jacking, and have been thinking about her a lot lately. Granted, she's been gone for many years now and I hadn't spoken to her in even longer, but one always remembers their childhood friends with fondness. Though I had already grieved the loss of her in my own life when we moved to NC, I also had to grieve the loss of her in the world - even ten years later when I heard of her death. She and I used to spend the night at each others' houses every weekend (we lived next door to one another) and a typical sleep-over night involved watching The Goonies and quoting lines, planning the next neighborhood adventure game. She was my first "BFF" and I was very sad to hear that she had been taken from us in such a violent way. When we sat down in the Varsity as The Goonies started, I thought to myself, "This one is for Amy."
On a lighter note, this was the first time that we left Orion with someone other than us! Russell's mom Jo Ann was kind enough to come to our place to take care of him while we were gone. She played baby olympics to keep him occupied and they had a good night together! I'm glad that it went well; though I thought about him a few times, I wasn't anxious like people might expect. Partially that's because I know Jo Ann's got the 'magic touch' with babies and I was leaving him with someone who loves him so much. And it was really nice for Russell and I to get out together and have a little break. My dad Kevin also joined us, so it was a good night and a lot of fun. I definitely left the theatre with a big smile on my face.
So here's to The Goonies, childhood friends, family, and of course: PIRATES!

A little gift from SCI

While at the first night of the SCI shows at the Red Rocks, a girl in the crowd nearby caught me near the end of the show and read the following off of a small laminated blue card:
You are Beautiful OUTSIDE and INSIDE!
You are Pure Love, Light and Joy!
Let your Love Light SHINE!
You are Amazing Just the Way You Are and Wonderful for Who You Are!
SMILE, Be Fabulous, and Make a JOYFUL SOUND!

She read it to me, passed it on, and told me to do the same. Since the show was about over, I figured I'd pass it on the next night. I stuck it in a pocket on the Ergo Carrier and then completely forgot about it. I'm sort of glad that I still have it, because it's a nice little gift, but I also feel bad that I forgot about it. This is my way of passing it on, to you. Maybe you could pass it on, too... If you feel like it.
Love...

Old Skool

I found this pic of my Aunt Holly and myself from several years ago while I was uploading some newer stuff. I thought it worth sharing again!

Some Live SCI

A short video of a bit of "Home", a Talking Heads song that String Cheese often covers, and is one of my favorites! Russell couldn't stop dancing initially, sot the video is shaky at first. You can tell the moment that I pointed out it would be unwatchable unless he held still!
The sound quality also improves as the crowd quiets down and gets into the song...

More photos from SCI

Orion's First Incident!

For those of you who have no idea what I'm referring to, Russell, Orion and I attended three nights of The String Cheese Incident at the Red Rocks amphitheatre in Colorado.
String Cheese (or SCI) is one of our favorite bands. They are a 'jam band', meaning that they have a very free-form style of play in which they will 'jam' or freestyle during songs, so their shows are always different from one to the next and song arrangements vary wildly from their studio-recorded albums. They also might start one song, jam into another one, and then loop back to the original tune. Another typical quality of jam bands is that they rarely pause between songs, so shows are often made up of continuous play with only occasional chatter. Other famous jam bands are The Grateful Dead, Phish, Widespread Panic, and a few more up-and-coming groups. String Cheese and the ones listed here also boast followings, meaning that crazy kids like Russell and I love them so much that they devote their time and energy to following the band around the country on their various tours, going to many of the shows and supporting themselves by selling goods like clothes or food in the parking lots of each venue.
SCI has been on hiatus for about three years now, taking a break so that the members could work on their side projects and get some rest from the constant touring. They came out of hiatus last year to play the Rothbury Music Festival in Michigan, which was one of the best shows I've ever seen - and that's saying a lot. They had such a good time playing at Rothbury that they decided to do a select number of shows in 2010 - the first three being at the Red Rocks. They also did three sets at the Horning's Hideout festival in Oregon this past weekend, and are doing two nights before Halloween (dubbed "Hulaween") at the Hampton Coliseum in Virginia (we're going to those shows, too, so we'll have seen 5 out of 8 of their shows this year).
The shows at the Red Rocks were destined to be awesome. SCI hails from Colorado, and most bands put on great shows when they're on their home turf for obvious reasons. Not to mention that the Red Rocks is an absolutely incredible venue! It's a natural amphitheatre formed by red sandstone walls on a mountaintop that overlooks Denver at an elevation of 6,450 feet. Absolutely incredible at night... I've been there a few times before, once during the day just to play around in the park, and another time some years ago for a rave. Russell had never been, so it was fun to watch his amazement at the awesome views and beautiful sandstone forms surrounding us as we danced the nights away!
All three shows were awesome, but as I predicted the second night was the best. SCI played a lot of the crowd favorites, so the sold-out audience of 9,450 people were all singing along! They also had stunt sky divers come swooping down over the crowd at a couple different intervals, trailing colored smoke during the day and sparklers at night. Some of them came very close over our heads before skimming over the edge and down to the ground outside the amphitheatre.
The third night was special, too, in that they had a bubble machine going that spread thousands of bubbles over the crowd. Just at that happened they also released a pile of large clear beach balls for the audience to bat around, echoing the bubble effect. Add the colorful stage lights to the mix and you have an epic visual show! The last night was also the full moon, which rose right over the stage in plain view. When the band finished the final set, it was about midnight, and they came out to do the encore - which was "Midnight Moonlight" an Old and In the Way tune that fit the moment perfectly.
Orion was awesome through all three shows. He slept a lot in the Ergo carrier, but when we had him out of it and he was awake he was completely unperturbed by the crowds. He got a lot of love and attention from the other Cheese Heads - all of whom were really helpful in protecting him and us from folks who were unaware that we had a baby with us. That's one of the things I love the most about the crowds at Cheese shows - they are easily the best group. Kind, conscious, and fun - and way less sketchy than most.
I wish SCI were on tour, and I wish we were following them... It's been a life-long dream of ours to run away on tour. It still may happen, one of these days!